Chasing Heroes is web site about heroes.  Our intent is to explore all facets of heroes [and occasionally heroines], take what we know and what we learn, and enhance both our reading and our writing. 

Every Monday, I write my column for Chasing Heroes.  For the next several [maybe more] Mondays, I’m going to explore the Hero’s Journey.  

As a preface to these ‘lessons’, today’s column will introduce the concept of the Hero’s Journey.  The journey itself reflects change, also known as transformation, and growth in the hero.  It is through his [or her] journey that the hero is able to reach a deeper understanding of who he is and can create deeper meaning in the world.    

Understanding fictional characters, particularly the archetypal patterns of the hero, offers us a tool with which to understand our own lives.

The Foundation of the Hero’s Journey: The Rite of Passage

The Rite of Passage is a common thread in middle school and high school curriculum.  The idea is that children and/or young adults need to be initiated into society in order to feel ‘part’ of it.  Without this ‘initiation’, how can they consider themselves part of the whole, or community?  They will remain outsiders.  

Many cultures still have ‘initiation’ rituals [Bar mitvah and quinceañeras, for example], but America is woefully lacking in these traditions.  What children are left with is confusion about their purpose; anger, frustration, and rebellion are often the end result and tell-tale signs of adolescence.

Carol Pearson, author of The Hero Within, wrote: “Our experience quite literally is defined by our assumptions about life.  We make stories about the world and to a large degree live out their plots.  What our lives are like depends to a great extent on the script we consciously, or more likely, unconsciously, have adopted.”  Our job as people, writers, and as active readers, is to be aware of and understand our own stories.  If we can do that, we can gain control over our unwritten futures and can define our own experiences. 

You are the hero of your own story.  Remember that this is true for your own life, as well as for the lives of each and every character in the books you read and write.  Even the villain is the hero of his own story, and he has undergone his own Rites of Passage that have led him to his current understanding of the world around him via his rituals.

Let’s look at the word ritual, an essential part of the Rite of Passage.

ritual |ˈri ch oōəl|nouna religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order : the ancient rituals of Christian worship | the role of ritual in religion.• a prescribed order of performing such a ceremony, esp. one characteristic of a particular religion or church.a series of actions or type of behavior regularly and invariably followed by someone : her visits to Joy became a ritual.adjective [ attrib. ]of, relating to, or done as a religious or solemn rite : ritual burial.(of an action) arising from convention or habit : the players gathered for the ritual pregame 

A ritual, then, helps our lives, and our actions, have meaning.  When we undergo struggles and/or difficulties, and are searching for meaning in our lives, we return to the rituals-the safe places where we can evaluate, tear down, and reconstruct ourselves and our meaning anew.   It is like a compass that guides us through our difficulties and struggles.  

In a nutshell, 

• anything done with pattern is ritualistic
• it is through rituals that we find and/or create meaning in our experiences
• everybody has rituals, even if they don’t recognize them
• often rituals are an instrumental part of transition [marriage, baby showers, retirement, funerals]
• Rites of Passage are necessary for us to grow as individuals and rituals thereafter help us redefine ourselves

If we break a Rite of Passage into stages, we can understand its power.  First is the separation from ritual, next is the initiation or transformation to a new experience, and third is the return to the ritual, now with new meaning.  Understanding these stages can help us understand ourselves, our characters, and those around us.  

There are so many types of rituals.  Some are significant, albeit simply part of the fabric of our lives [first day of school, club initiation or hazing, graduating high school or getting your first driver’s license for example], while others are transformative [death of a loved one, particularly a parent or spouse, and the funerals that help the living learn to relate to the departed in a new way].  Many funerals and/or death traditions keep us at a distance.  But some, particularly those stemming from non-American cultures, involve adults and children in the entire process [think el Dia de los Muertos]. The drawn out process of dealing with a person’s death actually is a transformative event that gives us a new reality.

My husband always scolds me for not liking to talk about death.  It’s a scary subject, yet one of the most important and inescapable rituals.  And we all face it.  Let’s talk about it today.

Question[s] of the Day:

What is the point of a funeral?  Who is it for?  The survivors?  The community as a whole?  To emphasize our own mortality or allow us to appreciate life a bit more?  Does your family have any funeral rituals?  

How is a funeral a Rite of Passage and how can it reconstruct who we are or how we see the world?